Bird in the Basket
by Paineful
Summary: Atoli remembers the kind of man Sakaki used to be, the kind of man he is no more.


Title: Bird in the Basket

Summary: Atoli remembers the kind of man Sakaki used to be--the kind of man he is no more.

I do not own .hack. If I did, it would never be written as ".hack," only "Dot Hack."

Also; for the sake of the story, can we pretend Sakaki isn't ten? I'd like to assume he's closer to eighteen or so.

* * *

Atoli remembers what Sakaki was once like.

There was a time when she had very little faith in life--thought there was no reason to live at all. She sought a way to escape. She had been stupid back then; she knows it now, and she recalls it with a bittersweet smile. Hadn't he been the one to show her how foolish she truly was?

Yes; Sakaki showed her what greatness can be molded from sorrow and tragedy. He taught her not to give up--not to shut her eyes to the darkness but to stumble through it in hopes that the sun would rise again.

Forfeit is the fool's way out, and she knows it now. But she might not have known it if Sakaki never showed her. She might have been dead.

They met offline after that--after he intervened and showed her the road to perseverance. They stayed in touch for a long time--many years, in fact. And Sakaki was Atoli's strength. He never gave up believing in her ability to guide herself, and Atoli valued that more than if he had tried to guide her himself. It was the idea that someone else could have such faith in a person that even taught Atoli how to smile again.

Sakaki showed Atoli The World, a beautiful place where people craft their own identities and shed the ones bestowed upon them, where boundaries are abolished just as city walls are besieged. The World was where Atoli truly became Atoli, and in it, Atoli was able to see and to experience the true Sakaki--the one who never gave up believing in her.

Sakaki isn't the same anymore. Atoli can't remember when he changed--perhaps it was too gradual, so gradual as to escape detection, to slip past notice.

He had always been a man of many hopes; someone who truly and deeply aspired for people to experience the same kind of peace he felt within himself. Sakaki wanted people to feel safe and protected; to know there always was a place where they belonged, where they were wanted. It was the reason why he slid so perfectly into place when he joined Moon Tree, like the long-lost piece of an ancient puzzle--once forsaken, now reclaimed. He was a natural, Atoli thought; she smiled when she watched him talking with the others, when she listened to the gentle way he regarded his allies, when she observed the way he so intently paid attention to the thoughts and opinions of others. Sakaki was considerate and loyal.

Sakaki was never a brave man. He had many hopes and dreams, but none of the courage to go along with them. The courage he lacked was courage in himself. But in replacement of that courage was something else--a humility, a deep modesty so pure and clean, so untainted by the spite and malice of the world around him, that it was rather soothing. In his inability to trust himself the way he so effortlessly trusted others lay something inexplicable and extraordinary. Something Atoli was certain only belonged to Sakaki.

Sakaki was a nervous man. It wasn't so much that his nerves were stretched taut--he was merely very watchful, watchful over his every word and every action to the point that he truly seemed like a man unsure of himself. He cared too much about other people's feelings that he felt he had to perpetually conserve them--and in doing so, he had to mold and shape and craft his _own_ feelings until they matched and comforted the feelings of others. It wasn't fair, but it was Sakaki, and because it was Sakaki, Atoli loved it and esteemed it as a quality like no other.

Sakaki was respectful. Atoli wouldn't compare him to the knights errant, but he was a knight in his own. He was courteous and polite; and the way he cared for his widowed mother was charming to watch. He had the air of a gentleman, an air long-since lost in the days of chivalry that thrived no more. Maybe others didn't respect their elders anymore, maybe they didn't regard their mothers as precious as the air they breathe, but Sakaki did.

There was nobody as considerate, as loyal, as modest, as patient, as thoughtful, as wonderful as Sakaki, a man who trusted others to no end and himself to no beginning.

Even Sakaki himself is no longer as considerate, as loyal, as modest, as patient, or as thoughtful as Sakaki. Because Sakaki is a different man now.

Sakaki smiles more than he ever used to; but his smiles are layered with ice and stone. He speaks with a confidence so strong, so unbreakable--so unlike the nervous, uncertain man Atoli knows and loves. He's a brilliant man, this Sakaki--the old Sakaki was no less so, but this Sakaki uses his gift for the wrong reasons, to achieve the wrong goals.

Sakaki is very proud of himself; the old Sakaki turned his back on pride and preferred trust and dignity. But no... Not anymore. Sakaki doesn't trust anyone anymore.

Not even Atoli, the one being he once trusted when she could no longer bear to.

Sakaki doesn't believe in Atoli now, not the way he used to--but he uses her. He knows she's waiting for something to show itself in him--something he no longer contains--and he uses it to his advantage, uses it to make her bend to his cruel will. He has her within a grasp so tight, not even pincers may rival it. A grasp so tight as to bend the wings of the precious little bird he's taken captive, bend them until they can no longer take flight, bend them until the small dove is vulnerable and at his mercy--and still does not cry out.

Atoli will never cry out; somehow, she smiles as she carries out his great and terrible will, as she places her trust in the hands of a man she knows--she _knows_--will only shatter it. She knows Haseo is right when he speaks out against Sakaki; she knows others are right when they claim he has his path set down a less than honorable road, when he aspires to attain something that should truly remain unattainable.

It hurts when Atoli remembers the old Sakaki; his soft and weak smile, uncertain even of itself; his charmingly humble ways. Sakaki isn't like that anymore. Something's consumed him--Atoli doesn't know what--but it's something terrible. It must be. Anything that takes a man like the old Sakaki and mutates him into the new Sakaki, nearly beyond recognition, can be no less than terrible.

Though it hurts, Atoli wonders what changed him. Though she wonders, Atoli never finds out.

But there is one thing for certain; Atoli will never leave Sakaki's side. No matter how deeply Sakaki worsens, Atoli will always stand to the right or the left of him, a hand reaching out for his own, a soul ready and willing to lift itself up for his. She will stand in front of him when he trusts not the true depth of the seemingly shallow waters he treads, and she will stand behind him when arrows fly at his back. He may capture her--a sweet songbird among ugly sparrows--he may throw her into a cage and place her on display with pride and vanity, qualities he never before possessed, but when Sakaki commands it, she will sing as she has always sung, and she will take no notice of her brutal captivity.

She will defend him with her small wings, bent and broken, stripped of their vibrant plumage. She will stretch them out before her captor as she sits in a basket he weaves and grows angrier, angrier still--not at him, but at the man who dares to harbor resentment towards him. She will lie on his behalf, undertake in tasks that bring her shame, force herself into the company of a man she knows holds naught but hate for the sight of her--all on Sakaki's behalf. She will humiliate and degrade herself, all for him.

And why? How? How can Atoli possibly lower herself in such a way when she knows this isn't right? How can she watch as Sakaki meets his decline--as he descends farther into the inescapable inferno of his own dark ambition--and take his hand and descend _with_ him? How can she know that the Sakaki she loved is gone, yet still serve faithfully the golem who stands mockingly in his place?

Because she knows--knows that he's in there.

There once was a time when Atoli was lost, too. When she wandered so far away that she couldn't find herself--couldn't be found--didn't even desire to be. But when she was lost, when she had given up any and all hope, Sakaki had been the one to find her. And when he found her, he did not guide her back into the light; he pointed in its direction and gave her wings with which to soar out of the darkness.

He gave her the gift of freedom, once. And though it seems now that he's taken it back--that he's crushed her wings in the very same hands that created them, that he's stuffed her into a neat little basket sewn of cunning deception--Atoli knows that she has to believe in him, even when it seems her efforts are in vain. Nobody told Sakaki to believe in her when she foolishly wanted to die, but he did it; he did it when no one else did. Now she had to believe in him in return--believe in him when no one else would, when no one else even wanted to.

She'll keep believing.

And someday, it will be enough--enough to bring him back.

* * *

I don't know.

The title, I would like to accredit to the Crimson VS card of the same name. It depicts an image of Sakaki, smiling, with his hand outstretched as if gesturing; Atoli is in the background, wearing a thoughtful and (what I believe to be) forced smile.


End file.
